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This little volume on child analysis consists of four short discourses or essays offered at the teachers institute through the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. The first lecture gives a general introduction to child analysis, reviewing various factors concerned in the development of normal children, their infantile neuroses, and some of the more severe early mental disorders. The authoress duly emphasizes that a thorough self-understanding is particularly necessary in any attempt to understand child psychology, or to make any analysis of the child's difficulties.
The second discourse carries one through a discussion of the various mechanisms revealed by this analysis, and compares the procedure with that of the analysis of adults. She treats of the dreams of children and their associations, reviews all phases of the most important Oedipus situation, discusses the importance of day dreams and phantasies in the analysis, the relating of the phantasies being an important help, and describes the castration complex in children. This lecture is also concerned with the masturbation conflict and the early compulsion neurotic symptomatology. The comparative length of the analysis and the phenomenon of resistance are ably described, and the rôle of transference in relation to the setting of the situation is referred to in this section. However, the role of the transference supplies the topic for the entire third lecture, where various technical elements are referred to, with emphasis on the play technic for establishing transference. A few dream examples are partly analyzed and numerous refinements in technic as applied to children are enumerated.
The fourth discourse discusses the relation of child analysis to the practical problems of management. Here more is said about the mechanisms of the infantile neuroses. It is emphasized that the psychoanalysis of children deserves to be practiced more, to become more popular, as it really belongs to and is a useful part of the psychoana